A concentrated version called “Health at a Glance 2007” was published this week, which is where these graphs were sourced and now presented without the analysis. It covers a variety of statistics on insurance, lifestyle influences (smoking, alcohol, road accidents), salaries for doctors and nurses, hospital care and government spending.

*Health care in Greece has worsened since this survey. Unpaid debts to pharmacies, hospitals and suppliers have forced providers to shut down or severely alter services; and many residents can no longer afford basic health care due to rising costs and unemployment.

Notes

Countries absent from a graph were excluded by OECD, either because data was not available or the data/survey was somehow tainted, skewed or inappropriately answered.

All graphs are presented as clickable images that will enlarge, since shrinking them only made them unreadable. You have the option to use the OECD link above, however the report is embedded in 50 pages and graphs are presented the same way. Here, you have them all at your fingertips and can choose only the ones that interest you.

6. Quality of health care

The quality of health care section provided limited information and did not include more than a few countries, either because data was not available or the survey was not completed correctly. Therefore, I omitted this data. (Greece was not included, in case you’re wondering).

4 Comments

I found all these statistics very informative. The number of smokers as a percentage in Greece seemed low. I didn’t meet very many people in Greece who DIDN’T smoke. They also don’t believe that second hand smoke is an issue. My cousin was smoking and drinking while she was 7 months pregnant. I was appalled. I did ask her if she was aware that smoking and drinking during pregnancy could cause low-birth weight, fetal alcohol syndrome and other developmental issues and her response was: “I smoked and drank during all my pregnancies and my other two kids came out just fine”. I shrugged (what else can you do) and walked away from the cloud of smoke forming above her head. I am also a bit surprised that the lung cancer rates are not higher in Greece. Who knows, maybe all the olive oil and garlic purges a lot of illnesses!

But in the survey above, the OECD was not privy to some information because Greece was responsible for reporting the data, and it’s not certain whether it was fudged or how the information was gathered since they didn’t disclose their protocol.

I do know a lot of people in my circle who don’t smoke, but I realize this is not ‘normal.’ I’ve often had taxi drivers or men I dated tell me how great it was I didn’t smoke, then proceeded to light up like chimneys. Smoking was technically banned in workplaces in 2003, but I and 4 other non-smokers sat in an one-room office with 75 smokers. I was ill for 3 weeks until I acclimated. That’s not a good thing, however my boss (a non-smoker himself) did not want to enforce the law because he felt productivity was higher if he let people smoke at their desks instead of going outside and “wasting time.”

Heart disease has increased dramatically in recent years, and there was a survey recently that said the Mediterranean diet with olive oil was becoming an endangered species of sorts. Most people don’t adhere to it, preferring fast food and lots of meat and eschewing exercise. One of my Greek friends has a saying for that: “The only time you see Greeks running is for the bus and in the Olympics.” 🙂

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